


You Yes You

by toomuchplor



Series: Unkissed [9]
Category: Inception (2010) RPF, The Dark Knight Rises (2012) RPF
Genre: Awkward Sexual Situations, Coming Out, Ear Kink, Kid Fic, M/M, Movie Premiere, Red Carpet, Rimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-04
Updated: 2011-10-04
Packaged: 2017-11-09 02:54:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/450468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toomuchplor/pseuds/toomuchplor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which there is the TDKR London premiere, skinny-for-his-art Tom, and way more glitter than you'd think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Yes You

**Author's Note:**

> Written in October 2011 before we knew much of anything about TDKR, let alone plans for the premiere, or that Joseph would be built like a brick shithouse and Tom would be a mountain man with a ginger beard for Mad Max. So -- inaccurate? But still entertaining, I hope.
> 
>  **Warnings:** Unrepentant schmoop. No, really. Um, what else? Slightly (temporarily) faily sex? Do I even need to warn for this at this point in my fic?... Also, is ear-biting a kink? It's *my* kink now anyway, thanks to Joseph and his adorable ears.
> 
>  **A/N:** Thanks to Lately and Xen for audiencing/beta-ing/handholding, etc.  <333 guys.

_Summer, 2012_

“Do you have a — roller thing, or,” Joe shouts across the flat, rummaging through the jackdaw’s nest that is Tom’s wardrobe. “There’s fucking glitter on my pants!”

“Yeah, under the sink in the loo,” says Tom, coming in the bedroom, closer than Joe expected. He’s messing with his cufflinks — the right one is always hard to do yourself. At the LA premiere they’d been buoyed up in preparations by a team of stylists, but this is London and that means it’s mostly been DIY.

“Come here,” says Joe, grabbing Tom’s left hand and tugging his wrist in, popping the cufflink through the starched holes on Tom’s crisp new shirt. “I have glitter on my pants,” he says again, in case Tom didn’t catch it the first time.

“There’s glitter on every fucking thing in the flat, what do you expect?” Tom asks without a hint of regret, frowning down at his cuff as Joe works. “It’s a phase, the princess thing, I expect.”

Joe laughs and shakes his head. “Nah, it’s fine,” he says. “Maybe they’ll think it’s part of my look or some shit.”

“Try the roller anyway,” Tom advises, looking up from his fastened cuff, smiling in that shyly proud way he does when Louis comes up in the conversation.

“You said under the sink?” Joe checks, brushing again at the sparkles that are winking up from his pants leg.

“Yeah, should be,” Tom says, and loops his tie around his neck.

Joe goes into the bathroom, digs around, comes up with a disreputable looking lint roller, peels away the top layer, and runs it over his suit a few times. He’s twisting around to check the back of his jacket when Tom comes into the room, in his jacket too now, just tucking his pocket square away. “Here, let me,” he offers, and takes the roller.

Joe wishes he could say that this sort of thing has lost its novelty — the two of them in the same place, getting dressed to go out, cozy and kind of domestic — but it’s been a hell of a year for both of them and it’s maybe only the third time this has ever happened in all those weeks and days and months; they’re rarely even in the same country, let alone the same small bathroom. “Hmm,” Joe says appreciatively, smiling, when Tom’s ministrations turn into a kiss on the back of Joe’s ear, fingers resting at the side of Joe’s neck. “Careful,” he adds when Tom’s kisses turn a little too ardent.

Tom freezes, mouth still against Joe’s skin. His sigh, to give him credit, is silent; Joe is only aware of it because he can feel the rush of air from Tom’s nose. Joe lifts his hand, _sorry_ , and curves it around the back of Tom’s head. Tom relents, setting down the roller and bringing his arms around Joe’s waist. 

It’s a different body pressed up against Joe’s back, different from the one Joe remembers from last summer; Tom’s closer to Joe’s own size now, trimmed down for another role, boyish and lithe where he’d been bulky and looming before. The line of his jaw, pressed to Joe’s shoulder, is still a mild surprise, how it cuts in a little more than Joe expects, sharp and hungry and lovely. “We’re still going together,” Joe says by way of apology. “Just — different cars.”

“I know,” says Tom. Joe can see his face reflected In the mirror, heavy lashes blinking in some private struggle.

“You know it’s not a matter of not wanting to,” Joe says, for what feels like the millionth time, the regret still as fresh as it was a year ago. He scratches his fingers through the short hair at the nape of Tom’s neck.

“I know,” Tom repeats, his voice as cloaked as his expression.

“Besides, it frees you up to make out with your best friend Gary,” Joe teases him, leaning back into Tom just for the pleasure of feeling Tom rocked off balance, Tom not being the immoveable object he once represented.

“Mm, Gary,” Tom moans into Joe’s collar, and they break apart with laughter as Tom glides his hands up Joe’s stomach and chest, feeling him up in that friendly way that is all Tom. Feeling up turns into preening, and Joe straightens Tom’s tie while Tom buttons Joe’s jacket. “You’ll sign some autographs,” he says, doing Joe the courtesy of pretending it’s a question rather than a negotiation.

“No one’s gonna want my autograph,” Joe says. “Are you kidding me?”

“Five minutes’ worth,” Tom says sternly; he may be smaller than he used to be but he still outweighs Joe, and now he’s got him by the lapels, he’s got one eyebrow raised, waiting.

“Yeah, fine,” Joe says, smiling, leaning in to brush a kiss over Tom’s mouth. “Come on, the cars are outside. Your handlers are probably shitting a brick by now.”

* * *

The premiere is a big fucking deal, like every other blockbuster premiere Joe’s ever attended. There is a lot of handshaking, a lot of flashbulbs, a lot of autograph signing (Tom shooting him fond grins as a reward), and the obligatory cast reunion hugs on the red carpet. Sure enough, Tom and Gary hug the holy hell out of each other and have some intense grinning chat while still shaking hands, like they couldn’t give a shit that all lenses are on them and their ridiculous bromance. Joe catches himself looking a little too long, turns his gaze and himself away a little too fast and bumps, quite literally, into Annie.

“Steady there, Jose,” she warns, leaning into his arm as he apologizes. Joe bends close and offers a more appropriate greeting, a gentle hug and cheek kiss, wary of her hair and dress and make-up. This is something he really doesn’t miss about girls, he thinks with an inward grin. “Hey, hold still,” she orders, and wets the tip of her index finger, dabs it under his eye. “Sparkle.”

Joe’s grin widens, gets extroverted. “There’s a princess phase,” he tells her quietly.

Annie shakes her head, smiling back as the camera shutters pop open and closed all around them. “Please tell me you’re talking about the four-year-old and not his dad.”

“Oh, _his_ princess phase is never-ending,” Joe kids back, turning to smile for the cameras, looping his arm around Annie. “But there’s less glitter.”

Annie’s laugh is mostly contained but there will probably be more than a few shots that capture her giggling.

And there’s Chris, and Christian. There’s Marion, and there are a host of other suits and glittery dresses, and they line up and smile like they did in LA last week, and again Tom manages to end up next to Joe without any obvious maneuvering at all. They mug for the cameras while Tom drapes his arm around Joe’s waist. If anyone got close enough, they’d notice that Joe smells like Tom — he’s been using Tom’s shampoo and shower gel.

Inside it’s more of the same, except with hors d’oeuvres and wine and fewer people asking for his attention. Joe’s not the big star here; he’s a medium star at most. Tom and Christian, Annie and Gary are the ones in demand. Joe chats on the fringes and eats tiny pieces of toast and tries to pay attention to how many glasses of wine pass through his hands. Louis is coming over first thing tomorrow, after all.

It’s not like it’d be so much better, or different even, if Joe were at Tom’s side. This way Joe even has the pleasure of periodically playing a game of Where’s-Thomas in the crowd of men in tuxes, and it’s like Tom knows when he’s looking, because almost every time it ends with Joe locking gazes with him and a heart-tugging exchange of small smiles even as they both keep up the conversation with whomever is standing in front of each of them.

* * *

They sit next to each other in the theatre. Tom twines his fingers with Joe’s as the lights go down.

* * *

“You’re sort of drunk,” Tom says as Joe piles into the limo after him. They could be going to another party, they could be going for a late dinner, no one who’s watching them has any way of knowing, and they’re leaving by the tightly patrolled back entrance anyway, so the only eyes that might fall on them are those of other high-profile guests and the security guys.

“They refill the wine when you’re not looking,” Joe says. “I’m good.”

Tom presses a polo mint into the palm of Joe’s hand as soon as they’re settled.

“Do I stink?” Joe asks, affronted.

“No, but I’d like to kiss you and I don’t fancy waiting until you’ve seen a toothbrush,” Tom says.

Joe pops the mint into his mouth hastily. “So I think your Oscar-meter went up another couple of points.”

“Ah, never happen,” says Tom, who believes these things as sincerely as he believes he’s nothing much to look at; he may as well believe in unicorns and flying monkeys, of course. Tom’s career trajectory is meteoric, and the little gold statuette is something it’s going to scoop up as it climbs upwards, almost an afterthought. “I think they liked it though, hmm?”

“Yeah,” Joe says, cracking up, struggling to keep the mint in the pocket of his cheek; he might be a little drunker than he thought, actually. “Yeah, I think they liked it okay, Tom.” He hasn’t kissed Tom nearly enough tonight. He works the mint around with his tongue, resisting the urge to crunch it so Tom will finally kiss him. Instead, he reaches across the seat and grabs Tom by the head a little clumsily, urging him over and encouraging him to pillow his head against Joe’s chest, over Joe’s heart. Tom giggles, but he goes, and it’s nice that Tom’s more compact right now, it makes this seem slightly less ridiculous, Tom’s shoulder lean and a little pointy as it nudges into Joe’s armpit.

“You’re not too drunk to fuck, are you?” Tom asks, going pliant and heavy, swaying a little in the stop-start-stop of the car working its way through late night London traffic.

“Hilarious,” Joe says, and crunches the mint in half anyway, too tipsy to keep himself from following his impulses. Tom’s warm, even through layers of jacket and shirt. “No, I think I can still get it up.”

“S’not what I mean,” Tom protests, but his hand slips down and rubs warmly over Joe’s crotch anyway; Joe’s cock takes interest immediately. “I meant, too drunk to fuck me. You know. Hard.”

Joe’s hips lift into the thought before Joe’s brain even processes Tom’s request. “Nngh,” Joe says, without meaning to. This sound alone forces him to concede the fact that he’s not just tipsy, he’s beyond a little buzzed, he’s even past Tom’s own assessment of ‘sort of drunk’. Joe is, however, definitely not too drunk to fuck Tom, you know, _hard_.

“Right, okay,” says Tom, apparently satisfied on this point. He gives Joe’s now-hard cock a friendly familiar squeeze of affection and lifts his hand up again. “Are you done that mint? Can I kiss you now?”

Joe rolls his head to the side, brains sloshing a little, and exhales shakily. “Okay?” he asks, like he’d meant for Tom to check, and hadn’t just released what amounted to a lustful sigh.

“Mm, yeah,” Tom says, tilting his face up for kissing.

For all Joe’s sort of embarrassing eagerness, their kisses soon relax from breathless and urgent to a more dignified if lazy exchange. Tom clings to Joe’s shoulders and sags in his embrace, loose-limbed and sweet as if he’s the one three sheets to the wind, throws a thigh over Joe’s lap and holds it still while Joe mindlessly grinds his erection up into it in a slow-motion promise of what’s to come. They’re both wrapped up enough that it’s only when there’s a genteel tap at the window separating them from the driver’s cab that Joe realizes they’ve been parked in front of Tom’s flat for some minutes.

“Oh bugger,” Tom says, half-falling across the seat as he works himself free of Joe’s embrace, and they’re both giddy, laughing, kicking each other as they tumble towards the door and Tom shouts an apology to the driver. “Cheers, mate,” Tom says, and gives the world’s least subtle tip, fumbling out a handful of crumpled banknotes and sort of pouring them into the driver’s palm while Joe pulls his jacket down and hopes he doesn’t look too dazed and red-mouthed, giggling in the middle of the sidewalk.

They attain the privacy of the flat after stamping up two flights of stairs. Joe follows Tom in and immediately loosens the knot of his own tie, shrugs out of his jacket, throwing everything to the floor while Tom slumps bonelessly against the wall and watches. “What?” Joe asks, because he’d sort of expected Tom to be undressing too at this point.

“I thought you were going to push me up against the door and bite my ears,” Tom says, but his tone is mildly curious rather than recriminatory.

“Sorry,” says Joe, stopping halfway through unbuttoning his shirt. “I must have missed that stage direction in the script.”

“Well,” says Tom, and lifts his arms up over his head, clasps the wrist of one arm with the fingers of the other, pushes his hips out a little, “it’s not too late to put it right.”

Joe gets about halfway into a laugh before his lizard brain takes over — Tom, arched back like that against the wall, mouth open and panting, eyes heavy-lidded and desperate. Joe doesn’t think, just slams his body up against Tom’s and pushes, like Tom is offering any resistance at all. Tom’s breath explodes out of him, half from the shock of impact and half in a crazed affirmation as he melts against the wall. Joe scrabbles at Tom’s clothes, unable to decide where to start unwrapping Tom from all his designer tailored cloth, and Tom sighs noisily and writhes, not making it any easier. “I didn’t know this was a thing for you,” Joe confesses, finally tugging the tails of Tom’s shirt from his pants, getting his hands up and under and pushing against taut skin over heaving ribs.

“It’s not,” Tom says, and blinks as though forcing his brain back online. He looks at Joe, visibly gathering his thoughts. “It is,” he revises. “It’s — you, though. I want you every way.”

“You want me rough?” Joe checks, finding Tom’s nipples, pinching them.

“Okay,” Tom says, with a faint whimper. “Yeah, let’s do that, tonight.”

“That’s what you want,” Joe half-asks, and leans in to bite at Tom’s ears.

“Yeah, that’s what I,” Tom starts to say, and gives up the rest of the sentence in favor of a moan. “I want you to fuck me, hard,” he says instead.

“I got that part,” Joe says. “Let me know if I miss anything else along the way, okay?”

Tom nods, swallowing noisily, and Joe lifts his eyebrows, grins, and gets back to work. He’d been surprised, himself, to find that he liked Tom’s new body as well as the Bane version, that he’d liked all the stages in between, too, a few stop-motion moments scattered over the year where they had managed to be together for a handful of nights, a new Tom every time.

A new Tom, and yet essentially the same surprising and crazy-hot Tom who had pinned Joe to that hotel bed in Pittsburgh and offered to hold Joe down and fuck him. Tom wants Joe every way, and that has Joe feeling grateful, good, because he’s been feeling like the lucky one, the one who gets a new lover every couple of months. It’s gratifying to know that Tom finds variety in Joe too, that he — and Joe has to give up the deep thoughts because he’s got Tom’s belt undone and his pants and underwear pushed down and having Tom’s cock in his hand precludes any kind of deep self-analysis, it really does. Joe gives Tom a few strokes and then lets go, pulls Tom around and pushes him face first into the wall this time. Joe wanted to go to his knees before he turned Tom around, and now the impulse is actually overwhelming. He sinks down, pokes his head up under the back of Tom’s unbuttoned shirt, drags his open mouth over the damp divot of Tom’s spine while Tom shakes and curses.

“Say what you want,” Joe tells Tom’s skin, still shrouded in the cottony veil of Tom’s shirt even as his hands get a good grip on Tom’s ass, as Joe’s thumbs glide in to meet at the middle, pulling Tom open a little.

“You know what I want,” Tom mumbles, sounding like his face is pressed against the wall.

“Say it anyway,” Joe tells him. “Don’t be afraid to go into detail.” He pauses, exhales heat into Tom’s already sweaty back.

“Okay, fuck,” Tom manages after a moment, “okay, I want you to put your tongue in my arse.”

“That’s all?” Joe prompts, knowing that’s not all.

“I want you to lick me,” Tom says, “hold me open and — and make me ready, Joseph, please, god, do it.”

“Ready for what?” Joe asks, but this last elaboration was much better, so he rewards it by tracing his lips lower, kissing at the top of the cleft between Tom’s ass cheeks.

“Ready for your cock,” Tom grates out, and there’s an audible thump as his forehead lifts up and clunks back against the plaster, the shock thudding down into Tom’s hips, Joe’s hands. “Ready for you to fuck me.”

“Well, okay,” Joe says, like Tom drives a hard bargain, and he sinks down a little further, urges Tom’s hips back, and flickers his tongue fast over Tom’s hole. Tom’s always been pretty vocal about enjoying this, but tonight he’s even more appreciative than usual, reacting to Joe’s every movement with half-uttered swears and catching breath. Joe takes his time, makes sure Tom’s down to vowel sounds and hisses before he finally points his tongue and pushes it in, gripping Tom tight by the hips even though Tom is remarkably still given the sounds he’s producing, like he’s afraid Joe would stop if he dares move. Finally Joe slips one hand around Tom’s hips and wraps his palm around Tom’s cock, and that’s what finally makes Tom’s hips snap forward and then back into Joe’s mouth.

“Stop, god,” Tom says, but doesn’t pull away, doesn’t bat at Joe’s hand, just gasps and waits for Joe to acquiesce, or not. Joe backs off anyway, not wanting Tom to come yet, and there’s a long moment where Joe rests his cheek against Tom’s hip and struggles to catch his breath, to remind himself that he needs to act with more finesse than just standing up and seeing if they can do this thing with only saliva as lubricant.

“Bed,” Joe says, rocking back, pushing to his feet. Tom is still propped up against the wall, heaving air in and out. Joe strokes a hand gently down Tom’s side, impulsively chases the caress with a slap to Tom’s ass, more playful than anything. “Come on, bed,” he urges, stepping out of his own pants, shrugging off his shirt.

Joe doesn’t wait for Tom, just leads the way, stripping and dropping his clothes as his goes, glad that his LA stylist is thousands of miles away from the way he’s treating Balenciaga right now. Sure enough, Tom’s tripping footsteps are almost immediately echoing Joe’s own, though Tom sounds more like the drunk one, hobbled by his pants around his ankles as he tries to hop out of his shoes.

He manages it, though; Joe gets to the bedroom and slows down, grabs for the mints on the dresser, lets Tom shoulder past him, naked now and moving fast. Tom dives for the bed and flips over onto his back, grinning, knees bent and splayed, waggling his eyebrows like a silver screen comedian.

“You think you’re pretty hot shit right now, don’t you?” Joe teases him, laughing.

Tom’s grin widens and he knocks his knees together and apart a few times, somewhere between a burlesque fan dance (minus the fan) and a juvenile delinquent; classic Tom, in other words.

“All right, all right,” Joe pretends to concede, and crawls onto the bed on hands and knees, biting down on the mints in his mouth. He ignores Tom trying to paw him sloppily, focussed on getting over to the nightstand and pulling out a condom, the lube. “Jesus, gimme a second,” Joe gripes through a laugh, because he’s trying to get the condom packet open and it’s hard to focus with Tom rolling into his side and nipping at Joe’s knee.

“Hurry up,” Tom says, but he eases onto his back again and lets Joe get the condom open, get it rolled on. He busies himself by grabbing the lube and getting started on his own prep, sloppy and dripping everywhere, but enthusiastic enough to grab Joe’s interest.

“Let me,” Joe says, and takes the bottle, slides his index finger in alongside Tom’s. Tom is loose from the tongue-fucking; it’s easy, but it’s making Tom go blotchy and pleased anyway, making him choke out urgent noises, his hand stilling, letting Joe take over. “Like this?” Joe asks, when Tom’s slick and ready, getting up on his knees, tugging at a pillow to raise Tom’s hips up a little.

“Yes, like this,” Tom says hotly, and kicks his heel ungently at the small of Joe’s back, urging him forward. “God, like this, please.”

Joe grins at Tom’s red ears, his fast rising and falling chest, and shuffles forward, uses one hand to line himself up, pushes in. They haven’t had time or energy for this, not with Louis staying over, and it’s months since Joe was inside Tom this way. His eyes slam shut against the tight, the heat, feels Tom letting him in. He needs to stop, then, and reach down, hook Tom’s knees up over his shoulders so he can bottom out, and Tom’s jaw is taut and Tom’s throat is stretched and eager, and Joe slides home even as he trembles with the control it takes not just to fuck Tom hard now.

“Kiss me,” Tom says, eyes closed, gasping.

Joe leans forward against the cradle of Tom’s thighs, wanting to oblige, but Tom bends so far and no farther. “You’re going to have to meet me halfway or something,” Joe points out, laughing.

Tom’s eyes open and his mouth pulls down into a frown as he sees for himself. “No, I’ll,” he says, and slips his palms between Joe’s shoulders and the backs of his own knees, tugs like his hands might succeed where the whole weight of Joe’s torso had failed. “Jesus fucking,” Tom says, blinking sweat out of his eyes. “What the fuck?”

“It’s okay,” Joe says, “you just need to slip one leg down a little and”—

“No, I used to be able to,” Tom says, and it’s kind of amazing he can look so absolutely disgruntled when Joe’s cock is up his ass. “Here, just — lean in a bit more, come on.”

“I’ll hurt you,” Joe protests, shaking his head. “I’m telling you, just move this”—

—“Lean _in_ ,” Tom orders, “I can do this.”

Joe narrowly avoids rolling his eyes and obediently leans in. Tom’s legs press a little further; he becomes an acute angle, a V. He doesn’t, however, become a hairpin.

“Harder,” Tom says, sweating and turning red in the face for all the wrong reasons.

Joe leans a little harder, against his better judgement.

“Ow, fucking _ow_!” Tom shouts, and Joe springs back hastily.

“Look, when was the last time,” Joe begins to ask, settling onto his heels, pulling out.

“I don’t know,” says Tom, “it’s probably because I was off my head on something.”

“Which makes it ten years ago at least?” Joe checks, not making eye contact.

There’s a pause. “I’m not even thirty-five.” Another pause. “ _You_ still bend that way, and you’re thirty-two!”

“Thirty-one,” Joe corrects him, and regrets it immediately. He has to laugh, though, when he looks up to apologize and sees the stormy look on Tom’s face. “Come on, you haven’t exactly been doing yoga this year. Give yourself a break. If I bulked up I’d lose some flexibility too.”

Tom punches Joe in the upper arm, not hard, but not really soft either.

“Are you done pouting now?” Joe asks, because in another minute he’s going to have to strip off the condom and they’ll be back to square one.

“Every time I went jogging I would imagine this,” Tom says, grumpily. “Bent in half with your cock buried in my arse, kissing your mouth while you fucked me.”

Joe swallows hard; the condom can stay put, actually. “You — while you were _running_?”

Tom smiles reluctantly, meets Joe’s gaze. “Everyone needs a little motivation, Joseph.”

“You said you were getting skinny for that Woody Allen project!” Joe says, unthinkingly touching Tom again, skimming hands up and down the insides of his thighs.

“I am! I was!” Tom says, and crooks one knee around Joe’s side again, pulling him back in close. “Just — for this, too.”

Joe laughs and pushes inside Tom again, not as deep at this angle but able with Tom’s legs lowered to get in close enough to kiss, kiss Tom’s pouting and rueful mouth, kiss the heated pink of his neck, his collarbone. “Not so bad, right?” he checks, fucking in and out gently, carding fingers through Tom’s short soft hair.

“S’not the same,” Tom says, but his mouth is twitching now, and then his hips lift up to meet Joe’s, and they both groan. “S’nice, I guess.”

“Nice?” Joe repeats mockingly, like he’s offended. 

“Fuck me gently, Joseph,” Tom says, choked and tender, barely containing his laughter now. “Make love to me sweetly.”

“Oh, hell no,” Joe says, and pushes up onto his palms, gets his knees under him a little more, and drives hard into Tom, whose laughter hiccups into something like a pleased squeak, to Joe’s gratification. “You’re such a,” Joe says, and pulls Tom’s legs up again, starts fucking him steady and hard while Tom alternates giggling and gasping, the former giving way to the latter more with each passing second. Joe lets himself think about it, all those miles Tom must have run as he dropped pounds of muscle, Tom with his hair dripping sweat and his lungs gasping, feet pounding the pavement as he pictured Joe fucking him like some amazingly perverted finishing line. “We,” Joe says, brokenly, “we can get you there, if you really want to, I know some — some flexibility drills from this choreographer, that”—

Tom blinks his eyes open and lifts his head from where he’s been craning back into the pillow. “Fuck me now,” he says, “kiss me later,” and he throws his arms up over his head and pushes against the headboard, bracing himself to fuck down onto Joe’s cock a little harder, the red circle of his hitRECord tattoo leaping out against the black-and-white canvas of his skin.

“Yeah, okay,” Joe says stupidly, and fucks Tom until they’re both shouting. Tom comes first, after only a half dozen messy strokes of his cock, and Joe follows gratefully after, not sure he could have held out much longer with Tom spread out under him like this.

“Mm, Gary,” Tom says against Joe’s lips, some minutes later.

“Mm, Angelina,” Joe returns, not missing a beat, and nudges Tom’s mouth open wider, deepens the kiss, rests his thumb against the red circle under Tom’s arm, that little patch of skin that Joe has always considered as his own even if Tom denies it, even if Tom tells reporters in that breezy tone, _oh, Joseph, yeah, he’s my mate, we’re buddies_. “Are you happy?” Joe asks, very softly, pulling back.

Tom is still chasing Joe’s lips a little, and it’s obvious that it takes a few seconds for the question to register as more than just another joke between them. “Yeah,” he says, “yeah, of course.”

“I know you want to tell people,” Joe says.

“Everyone who matters knows,” Tom says, as he always does, and he kisses Joe’s forehead. “Go on, get under the covers, you’re going to come over all gooseflesh in another minute.”

Joe goes while Tom gets up, pads to the bathroom and back, and when Tom is back in bed Joe rolls unashamedly into his heat. As always, he wishes a little vainly that he could stay awake long enough to enjoy this, another too-rare novelty, but Tom’s warmth and the steady bump of his heart and the dark closeness of the room are powerfully soporific; Joe’s gone under before he has time to do much more than drape his arm over Tom’s belly.

* * *

“Come on, then, I just want to learn from your example,” Tom says in the morning, smiling and tousle-headed and holding Joe’s ankles, one in each hand.

“I thought Rachael was going to be here any minute,” Joe says, turning his head to look at Tom’s alarm clock, nervous.

“Nah, she’s always really late,” says Tom, and kisses the ticklish back of Joe’s knee. “Loads of time, I swear.”

Twenty minutes later Joe’s still trying to catch his breath, flexing his toes, pleased with the rubbery burn in his hips and thighs, when the buzzer goes. Tom, who’s just ditched the condom, lifts up his head and says, “Oh, well, first time for everything,” and gives Joe a wink as he tugs on his pajama pants and yanks a t-shirt over his head. “Take your time, I’ll be making coffee,” he says, while Joe flings pillows at him, torn between laughter and horror.

“If she’d been three minutes sooner,” Joe hisses meaningfully, but Tom just grins and interjects.

“Then they’d have been stood outside three minutes waiting until you stopped shouting long enough for the buzzer to be heard inside.” He frowns as though considering this. “Actually, they might have done already.”

Joe runs out of pillows to fling and flops back onto the mattress with a groan of dismay, but he can’t fight his smile off any longer. “Coffee?” he says, going back to Tom’s earlier promise.

“Coffee,” Tom says, and pauses with his hand on the doorknob, gives Joe a fond once-over.

“I’m still pissed at you,” Joe warns him.

“Tell that to those bloody dimples,” Tom counters with infuriating delight, and goes to buzz Rachael and Louis up.

* * *

When there’s a four year old in the flat there’s not a lot of energy or air for much else, and Joe honestly doesn’t mind a bit, not least because Tom is so clearly smitten with his kid, and his kid smitten with him. Joe would be perfectly content to sit back and watch them play, watch Tom laugh and tackle Louis and tell stupid knock-knock jokes, but it’s better than that, because sometime between Joe’s first incredibly awkward Skype conversation with Louis and now, they’ve somehow become friends. Louis crawls over Joe just as readily as he does Tom, he demands Joe’s attention and drags him around by the fingertips and makes Joe help him do somersaults and pirouettes.

“I’m not actually a jungle gym,” Joe tells him at one point, but lets Louis scale him like a set of monkey bars anyway.

“What’s a jungle gym?” Louis asks, and swings by his arms from Joe’s neck. Tom’s no help, too busy making sandwiches for lunch and pretending not to laugh at Joe.

Much later, when they’re watching _Tangled_ for the third time in as many days, Tom says, “Be right back, have to have a wee,” and tips half-asleep Louis from where he’s been snuggled into Tom, like Louis is just a magnet that will stick to whatever he’s —

But Louis does, he is, he burrows into Joe with a small sleepy noise and blinks owlishly at the television, his tiara askew and his pink satin dress slipping off one shoulder. Joe lifts his hand and resettles the tiara, spends a dazed second toying with Louis’ short soft hair, and it hits Joe then, almost a palpable _whump_ to his middle: he could fucking love this kid.

“Ahh,” says Tom, returning, vaulting lightly over the back of the couch and flopping down with his feet in Joe’s lap, ankles on Louis’ short legs. “What’d I miss then?”

Joe looks over at Tom, his handsome face blue-lit and a little weary, but happy nonetheless. “His real name is Eugene,” he tells Tom, but he has to clear his throat first.

* * *

In two days they’re parting ways again, Tom off to France for more Batman promotion and Joe back to LA for some hitRECord shows, but they’ve made plans to meet up next month in New York for a week, and they’re pencilled in for London again in the early fall. It’s not enough — it’s never enough — but it’s something to go on.

“You’re not looking at red carpet reviews, are you?” Joe asks, glancing over and seeing Tom frowning at his laptop where he’s slouched up against the headboard. “Don’t read that shit, I keep telling you.”

“Oi,” says Tom, “language,” and nods at Louis sleeping between them, like he hadn’t just turned off some British comedy that would be bleeped out of existence and logic if they were in America. He squirms, displeased. “Do I look ‘almost emaciated’ to you?”

Joe snorts and reaches over, bats down the screen of the laptop. “No,” he says, “no more internet, I’m cutting you off.”

“Wait, I want to reread the interview where you tell that woman you don’t have a girlfriend,” Tom says, hastily sticking his fingers into the closing gap between screen and keyboard. “It makes me tingly in my nether regions.”

“Oh, so _that’s_ okay, talking about your nether regions,” Joe huffs, rolling his eyes, tilting his mouth up. “I was just being precise, anyway.”

“Precisely romantic,” Tom says fondly, and slips his fingers out, lets Joe snap the laptop shut in favor of leaning over and biting the tip of Joe’s nose, then the wing of his ear with a little fond growling noise.

“You are so weird about ears,” Joe protests, holding still until he’s sure Tom is finished.

“It’s either ears or stilettos, and you’ve said no to those,” Tom says for the dozenth time.

Joe sinks down into his pillow, ignoring this, and reaches over to shut off the reading light on his side of the bed. Louis stretches and kicks him with a surprising amount of strength for someone so short. “Is he staying?” Joe asks, wincing.

“Well,” says Tom, “I can’t lift him with these arms like spaghetti, I’m so fucking emaciated.” His tone is light, silly, but Joe abruptly realizes that it’s Tom’s last night with Louis for the foreseeable future, and maybe there’s a reason Tom allowed Louis to fall asleep here in the first place.

“Wouldn’t do for you to drop him,” Joe says, and tugs the covers up, rolls a little bit further away from Louis and his heavy sleepy legs. “Goodnight, then.”

He can’t see Tom’s face now, but he can picture it perfectly — the little frown of confusion, followed by the slow twist of a pleased half-smile. A moment passes by, and then Joe hears Tom shuffling his laptop to the floor, watches the room drop into darkness as Tom clicks off his light, feels the mattress bounce a little as Tom lies down and slings one of his arms over his sleeping son. “Goodnight,” Tom says, very quietly, and it sounds like _thank you_.

* * *

“Yeah, okay, go find your trainers,” Joe says the next morning when Louis campaigns for a trip to the playground down the road. Louis utters a victory cry and pelts off to the front entrance, his blond hair sticking up every which way, his little legs just slightly bowed, like Tom’s.

Tom looks up at Joe over his coffee cup, eyebrows flying upwards. “Am I meant to take him?” he asks.

“You could come along, sure,” Joe offers, casually as he can.

“Joseph,” says Tom. “I hate to point out the obvious, but there’s every chance some bloke with a camera may pop by to document this moment.”

Joe checks for keys, wallet. His ears are a little warm but he thinks he’s staying outwardly calm otherwise. “Yeah, of course,” he says. “So?”

Louis runs back in holding a mismatched pair of light-up shoes, one pink with fairies and the other blue with monsters. They’re both for the left foot. “Hurry, Daddy!” he shouts, and slams his ass down onto the floor, frantically stripping up the velcro and jamming his feet into the shoes.

Joe braves a look at Tom. Tom isn’t frowning. He’s actually nearly the mirror image of his vividly excited son. “You sure?” he says, beaming.

Joe pulls a face of amused impatience. “Hurry!” he says, echoing Louis’ tone.

“Yeah, okay,” Tom says, and stands up, heading for the door and his own non-fairy non-monster sneakers. Joe snags him by the hand as he passes, holds him up for a moment, dabs a finger gently to Tom’s temple.

“Glitter,” Joe says, and strokes his thumb over the arch of Tom’s lifted eyebrow, then kisses it for good measure.


End file.
